You're underselling the importance of persuasion in the fight for gay marriage. Yes, morality was on our side, but it absolutely wasn't won by lecturing, but rather by appealing to the moral sensibilities of our opponents to actually convince them it was the right thing to do. See Andrew Sullivan's pioneering writing on this from back in…
You're underselling the importance of persuasion in the fight for gay marriage. Yes, morality was on our side, but it absolutely wasn't won by lecturing, but rather by appealing to the moral sensibilities of our opponents to actually convince them it was the right thing to do. See Andrew Sullivan's pioneering writing on this from back in the day. I myself changed a lot of minds on this simply by being decent towards (and even friends with) many conservative Christians, allowing them to accept me on their own terms. "Lecturing" was rather the tactic of the right in that fight, and it only hurt their position.
I think this all has more to do with misattributing the success of gay marriage, rather than just wrong lessons learned. The "lecturing left" has been around for at least the past 60 years, and from their home base in academia, they take credit for civil rights successes, and their students believe them. But look closer at those successes, and it's generally the "normie" folks doing the patient work of persuasion that actually win the day. We learn the wrong lessons because we're listening to the wrong teachers.
Came here to say this. To the degree that there was lecturing and hectoring in favor of gay marriage, it likely harmed the cause on the margin. We were just lucky that the issue itself, with the help of the enormous amounts of persuasion that many of us were out there doing, was strong enough to succeed fantastically in spite of that.
You're underselling the importance of persuasion in the fight for gay marriage. Yes, morality was on our side, but it absolutely wasn't won by lecturing, but rather by appealing to the moral sensibilities of our opponents to actually convince them it was the right thing to do. See Andrew Sullivan's pioneering writing on this from back in the day. I myself changed a lot of minds on this simply by being decent towards (and even friends with) many conservative Christians, allowing them to accept me on their own terms. "Lecturing" was rather the tactic of the right in that fight, and it only hurt their position.
I think this all has more to do with misattributing the success of gay marriage, rather than just wrong lessons learned. The "lecturing left" has been around for at least the past 60 years, and from their home base in academia, they take credit for civil rights successes, and their students believe them. But look closer at those successes, and it's generally the "normie" folks doing the patient work of persuasion that actually win the day. We learn the wrong lessons because we're listening to the wrong teachers.
Will and Grace and Modern Family probably were a huge factor in building support for Gay Marriage.
Came here to say this. To the degree that there was lecturing and hectoring in favor of gay marriage, it likely harmed the cause on the margin. We were just lucky that the issue itself, with the help of the enormous amounts of persuasion that many of us were out there doing, was strong enough to succeed fantastically in spite of that.
Hard not to listen to the people who write the magazine articles and the history books about their amazing accomplishments 😏